


It's Time He Knew...

by lucarionme



Category: Undertale
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Dadster, Family Headcanons, Post-Pacifist, Reunions, with special guest woshua
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 02:51:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7827511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucarionme/pseuds/lucarionme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Sans! You cannot stay locked inside of your room all day doing... whatever you're doing!"<br/>Papyrus is right. Sans told him they needed to go somewhere today, somewhere special... and he's dreading it. He stuffs the envelope full of old pictures into his pocket, and leaves his room quiet and empty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Time He Knew...

The moist, blue sand and gravel crackles underneath the brothers as they trek through Waterfall, the eldest of the two popping his knuckles with trepidation. He keeps them deep within his pockets so Papyrus cannot see how much they're trembling... The last reset is over now, peace has been made... Every choice, every motion counts now, and Sans is having a hard time adapting. He still wants to feel hollow like he did before, like his reckless habits will be forgiven within the endless cycle of resets, but that's over now. He's been waiting for, anticipating this time of peace, because he owes his brother something he could only emotionally handle once...  
"Common' now, Sans! You know I can't wait around for surprises! The mystery gets me in a tizzy!"  
"I- Sorry, bro. I don't really know how to, uh... explain this surprise to you."  
The skeleton grinds his teeth, his natural smile wobbly and unsure. Years spent locked in his room meditating over pictures, reliving the past in the gears and heavy steam in the basement, all boil down to this. He's not ready. He could never be ready. He doesn't even realize he let out such a hefty sigh until he hears it repeated through a nearby echo flower.  
"Heh... Hey, Pap? We've made it pretty well on our own out here, haven't we?"  
"Of course!" Papyrus responds in his usual giddy tone, if not a little excited.  
"I have a nice house with my nice brother, and now we have a nice human! The wonders hard work can bring never cease to amaze me!"  
"Heh, yeah..." Sans lightly clicks his teeth together, trying to find the right words to say to his other half.  
"Well, uh... Remember when we were little baby bones? How we used to kinda'... jump from house to house?"  
Papyrus was distracted, giving a wave to the passing Woshua as their feet finally hit the wooden boardwalk, echoing a distinct thump thump through the cave. Sans doesn't like thinking about the past. Good memories or not, they're always linked to more memories, eventually reaching the bitter, sour ones. At night, he would often find himself shuffling through boxes of pictures, trying to piece things together at a time when Papyrus wouldn't worry him. The lab, the scientists, they have never truly had a home, but the older of the two feels it the most.  
"You know I have a hard time recollecting my baby memories, Sans! That's why you're the family historian!"  
"Family... Yeah, hey, Pap?" He stops before a sea of tall grasses, turning to look into his brother's eyesockets.  
"G-Get serious here for a second, please. This is... ah..." He averts his gaze after Papyrus's grin evens out.  
"Is something wrong, brother?"  
Sans shakes his head, rattling the unknown object in his skull, the one silly little thing that both the brothers have shared all their lives. He gently grasps Papyrus by the hand, leading him into the grass.  
"Back when we were kids..." He recollects out loud.  
"We'd hang out with the kids in the city... At the end of the day, their parents came to pick them up and you'd always ask..."  
"'When is someone coming to pick us up', right?" Papyrus fills in the pause, his face scrunching up in confusion.  
"I remember! You said that question was silly! That we picked ourselves up! That always made me chuckle... because we can't pick ourselves up!... Well... is that what jumping is?"  
He tends to trail off; He always has. A bit of Sans's smile returns in a twitch at his brother's conclusion, and they step out of the brush, allowing Papyrus to pick a few hitchhiking snails from his battle body. He stops in place with great confusion, however, when he sees... just past the save point... A door. A regular, unassuming grey door rests embedded in the wall of the cave; One he's never seen before.  
"Sans..." He mumbles.  
"I am quite sure that the average number of doors down here in Waterfall is zero! Now, heh, doorways; an entirely different story! But even so..." The two brothers stare at the innocuous door, both overtaken with completely different emotions.  
"There has never been even a doorway here..."  
The two feel a slight shiver down their spines as they get closer. Sans is a little disappointed with himself at this point. He's been down here many times before... as a child, on his work breaks, in the dead of night. He knows what's beyond that door, but it's simply the thought that... He's worried Papyrus won't be able to handle it. He's strong willed, but has an undying innocence about him. Sans can't help but worry about the baby brother he spent his whole childhood looking out for. As little ones, Papyrus was always curious, adventurous, just as he is now, but he would have bouts of solemn contemplation.  
"Who are our new friends leaving with, Sans?"  
"When are our parents coming, Sans?"  
"Why don't we have a family, Sans...?"  
It's been a long time since he's asked anything like that. After a while, he came to terms with Sans's excuses and subject avoidance, as all questioning children eventually do. He adapted, the various scientists that alternated between caring for the little skeletons being the only adult family he decided he needed. But now, as Sans has been mulling over again and again, it's time to disturb the still water for honesty's sake.  
"Yeah... It's uh... not always there..."  
They stand before the door, The most nervous of the two reaching out to grab the doorknob.  
"Papyrus, you gotta'... You need to meet someone..." The knob shakes a bit before Sans can pull the creaky, slightly decaying door open. A waft of cool air escapes the pitch blackness of the doorway, rustling Papyrus's scarf with an eerie slowness.  
"Eh... S-Sans?" Papyrus is reluctant to follow his brother as he steps into the darkness, but is slightly reassured when Sans tangles their two hands together to guide him. He hears a boney hand pat along the walls as Sans searches for a dusty light switch, and then a slam as the door disappears behind them, plunging them into complete blackness.  
"Nyeh! S-Sans!" He yanks his older brother up into his arms.  
"Bro! Hey! Papyrus! Put me down so I can turn the light on!" The little skeleton squirms out of his bindings and continues to feel for the switch on the wall of the little hallway without visuals.  
Over the sound of Papyrus's body rattling in fear, there's a click, and a barely functioning, depressing fluorescent light buzzes and flickers awake in the room ahead of them. Papyrus looks on in confusion at the near completely empty, grey room. Nothing but a few scattered photographs, a bag of hotdog buns, a stack of books, and the intimidating, looming shadows that linger in the room's four corners. He stares into one as he steps forward, leaning down to clumsily pick up one of the dirty old pictures. It's a young Sans and Papyrus, before he hit his growth spurt, bundled up on a trip to Snowden.  
"No wonder you've been forgetting everything as of late, Sans! All of our records are here!..."  
He turns to his approaching brother when he hears the echoing, slippered footsteps, holding the photo up for Sans to barely see.  
"You introduced me to the gift tree that year, right? That's the smile of a little monster who just met Santa!"  
"Heh, yeah, I think so..."  
As the two brothers chatter and reminisce, something stirs behind them, toppling the stack of science, coloring and joke books. All goes silent as their heads follow the noise to the mess, and the shadowy blob that had somehow moved from the corner, closer to the two visitors.  
"E-Eh... Sans?!" Papyrus takes a step back towards the wall when he realizes that the shadow is a three-dimensional, bubbling mass. It slides very, very slowly across the floor, its body dripping upwards and coating the ceiling in a shiny new layer of the tar-like substance. Sans stands unfazed as it approaches, hiding his apprehension behind his smile.  
"Pap..." He covers the hand tightly gripping his hoodie with his own as the mass stretches upwards, exposing what could be considered a gooey turtleneck, a melting, vaguely skeleton head, and two long, gnarled hands that stretch towards the pair with a moan, white and black matter dribbling through the holes in each palm.  
"Ssssshhaahhhh...." The creature gurgles. Papyrus remains paralyzed.  
"Go on, Pap... it's..." He pauses for a second, before looking up to his rattling brother.  
"It's our father..."  
Through the sound of Papyrus's chattering teeth, the creature gently gasps, moans, as if it has trouble breathing and speaking. It looms over the brothers, eventually taking the younger brother's free hand in both of his.  
"Y-You remember anything, Papyrus?... They used to, uh... call him 'Dr. W.D. Gaster'..."  
Gaster, when referred to by name, gives a wobbly grin, raising the hand a bit higher to inspect it. His matter sticks to the fabric like wet glue, not particularly easing Papyrus's fear.  
"Wh-, y-you said we never h-had a father, Sans! Why-, Why is he like this?!"  
"I didn't say we, eh, never had one... Just that we... didn't have one." Sans nervously picks at a crack on the back of his skull.  
Gaster allows Papyrus to withdrawal his hand, beginning to sign something to his son. Papyrus, however, cannot understand the muffled motions, and looks to Sans for guidance.  
"He says, 'LONG STORY'..." Sans has been around his father long enough to where he himself took the initiative to learn MSL. Gaster is... not the best artist, and his unstable mass tends to muck up the pictures he attempts to portray to his eldest. This made communication difficult in his early years of nonexistence.  
"Ahhhuhhhhhh..." He continues, inching closer and closer to the son he's been missing for decades.  
"'THE CORE, TAKES MATTER, LAVA, DECONSTRUCTS IT FOR ENERGY. I MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE'. It wasn't your fault, dad..." He signs quickly, he has so much to say to his youngest.  
"YOU WERE YOUNG. TOO YOUNG. I... FELL. IT ERASED ME'."  
Papyrus remains in place, his face a complicated mixture of confusion, fear, sadness, nothing like Sans had ever seem on him before.  
"'I COULD NO LONGER BE THERE, HERE, ANYWHERE'. He didn't..." Sans takes a sharp inhale.  
"He didn't want to leave us, bro... He... It ripped him apart. He doesn't exist anymore... 'PIECE BY PIECE, ATOM BY ATOM, QUARK BY QUARK'."  
"But he..." Papyrus hesitates to touch the bubbling mass for fear it would engulf him.  
"He's right here! He's been right here the whole time, Sans!" The younger brother now looms, his eye sockets beginning to fill with tears that dribble out when he looks down at his brother.  
"You could have brought him to us! We could have had a family!"  
Sans's already unstable smile drops as Papyrus breaks away from the two to pace. He's angry, really angry. Sans's head sinks; he can't stand to see his brother like this. He's always been a happy kid, a positive kid, even in the face of something as serious as this. Sans didn't know he was harboring such hate and sadness towards their lives. Gaster takes notice; Sans suddenly knows what being a failure is like. All those years, he thought everything was ok. As the ranting stops, he lifts his heavy head to speak until he notices that Gaster stopped the chaos, both of his melting hands holding firm onto the crying Papyrus's shoulder pads.  
"Hhhn, ah- hhhuuhhh... Pappyyy- russs..." He manages to groan out, before releasing his son to sign to him again. Sans does his duty through his gritted teeth.  
"'DO NOT BLAME YOUR BROTHER FOR MY MISTAKES. I CANNOT LEAVE. YOU TWO EXIST. I CANNOT. HE WAS AFRAID. FOR YOU. FOR WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN'." Gaster lets out a long, breathy, gurgling sigh before continuing.  
"'FOR SOMETHING LIKE THIS. WE ARE ALL ONE, CHILD, I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN WITH YOU'..." He takes a long finger, tracing around the hole in his palm.  
"'WHEN YOU FIGHT. WHEN YOU USE YOUR MAGIC. WHEN YOU BARE YOUR SOUL. THAT IS ME AS MUCH AS IT IS YOU'." A sticky hand is pressed to Papyrus's forehead, making him flinch slightly before Gaster leans down to pick a photograph off of the floor, flipping it to show the other.  
"'BUT DOES HE NOT DESERVE PRAISE? WHAT YOUR BROTHER DID FOR YOU WAS'..." Sans stops, choking on his father's words.  
The picture, now a bit muddied, is older than the first. It was taken in the True Lab. A young Sans, with a just nigh able to stand Papyrus grinning alongside a long forgotten monster scientist. Sans begins to tear up as well, what with the way his father speaks of him. It has been hard... He didn't, still doesn't know how to raise a child, let alone a child and himself. He knew that they both needed to eat and sleep, that they both needed to stay safe and happy, but they were both just children. All that he had was the desire to live. Gaster has more to say, but cannot force Sans to continue. Instead, he presses Papyrus closer to his quietly lamenting brother.  
"Sans... I..." He reflexively puts a hand to his mouth. He feels disgusted with himself, and neither brother can look each other directly in the eye.  
"I just thought that... I thought that everyone went through this..."  
"...I wasn't honest with you. I-I thought I could just... hide everything so we could live a happy life but I, uh... I messed up..."  
Papyrus looks up to the dripping monster that now has both unstable hands placed atop his shoulder pieces. Gaster opens his mouth, disturbing the stringy bits of matter that drop across it with his hot, unnatural breath.  
"Ssss- huhh... Yoouuu... are... sssstrooong..." He hisses to the best of his abilities, Papyrus subtly leaning away when his father's deathly, ashen-smelling breath hits his face.  
"Buuhhhhh... Buhh..." He gives up, resigning to signing his final thoughts to Sans.  
"'BOTH OF YOU'..."  
"'YOU ARE MY GREATEST CREATIONS. NOT THE CORE. NOT THE DTE. WHILE I WAS GONE. YOU THRIVED.WHILE MY EXISTENCE. DISSIPATED INTO A MYTH'." Meanwhile, Sans had already moved closer to his brother, close enough to wrap a hand around his thighbone and affectionately lean against him.  
"'BE PROUD OF WHAT YOU BECAME. WITHOUT MY GUIDANCE'... But now that everything's finally ok... we can be a family again, Pap. You know... make up for all that lost time?" Sans forces out a chuckle, trying to lighten his brother up.  
Papyrus isn't quite sure what to make of the entire situation as he looks down to his brother with a near blank expression upon his face, the last of his skeleton tears already almost dry. His face twists into one of violent relief as he registers Gaster's words, contagious tears of joy beginning to run instead. The younger brother laughs through his overwhelming joy, as does Sans, both heads being cradled in gooey hands.  
"Heh... Common'. We can't do this forever." Sans jokes, wiping the majority of his face dry. He then pulls an overstuffed envelope from his jacket pocket, clutching it tightly with both hands.  
"I-I brought more pictures. The good ones, that I've been saving for today. We have a hell of a lot to go over."

**Author's Note:**

> Eugh god this kept me up for days... I still don't know if I can write angst correctly....


End file.
